UCONN 70, TENNESSEE 61

If you missed "the" game, you missed a historical moment, on SO many levels.
An "impossible dream" that so rarely comes true. Plus the fact that the two principal characters "front and center" were both Italian, with a great pride in their Heritage, and reflected so Positively on that Heritage.

Diana Taurausi is a lovely young lady, great athletic talent, extremely goal oriented, who inspires, and is loved by her teammates, whom she makes better, is so unaffected, and personable, that you cannot help but like her.

Geno Auriemma has movie star looks, exudes confidence, charming and modest, is intense, and he is guarded with those outside his circle. Geno seems to evoke total adoration of a "surrogate" father from team members, with whom he is demanding, while using a spectrum of motivational techniques.

These Italian Americans were the key actors in this drama, and played their parts to perfection, and received sustained ovations. They made ALL Italian Americans proud.

There are four articles below:
Geno and Diana beat Tennessee
Taurassi is "Special"
The friendly rivalry of  coaches Calhoun and Auriemma
UConn fans are delirious, actually the Entire state is
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UCONN WOMEN JOIN MEN AS CHAMPS
New York Times
By Lynn Zinser
April 7, 2004

NEW ORLEANS, April 6 -- the Connecticut women's basketball team held up its part of the party, winning a third consecutive national title with a 70-61 victory over Tennessee on Tuesday night at New Orleans Arena. That capped a UConn sweep of the men's and women's N.C.A.A. basketball titles, a feat no other college had accomplished.

It was a crowning moment for UConn guard Diana Taurasi, who played her final college game, scoring 17 points and walking off as the best player on a three-time championship team; she is destined to be known as one of the best women's college basketball players ever.

The Huskies proved too much for the Lady Vols, putting on spurts of offense in both halves. In between, Tennessee battled with tenacious defense and rebounding to make it a game, but UConn's higher-powered offense eventually came through.

With the victory, UConn Coach Geno Auriemma raised his total to five national championships, behind only Tennessee Coach Pat Summitt's six...

The Huskies beat Tennessee for last season's title, as well.
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WHEN TAURASI HAS THE BALL, AURIEMMA HAS NO WORRIES

New York Times
By Harvey Araton
April 7, 2004

NEW ORLEANS--IT was beyond his control, Geno Auriemma understood and wasn't too proud to admit it. The season. The championship. The nerve-racking finish to what he called four unbelievable years.The ball was in Diana Taurasi's soft hands, and what fool coach wouldn't take his chances with that?

"She's either going to win the game along the way or have a horrible night and we're going to lose," Auriemma said before Connecticut defeated Tennessee last night, 70-61, to win the women's national championship.

This was no premonition, merely an honest acknowledgement that Taurasi had long since grown into her role, her talent, her potential to be the best player he has coached, and perhaps the most creative court presence in the history of the women's college game.

One more victory for Taurasi's third national title wasn't going to alter these perceptions, or the opinion that she was the singular factor in the shifting of supreme power, from Tennessee to Connecticut, at the turn of the century. But if Auriemma is anything, he is a man who relishes a good exclamation point, especially when given the chance to puncture Pat Summitt's (Tennesse's coach) bubble...

(During the recruiting process, Diana) "...brightened when she made her official visit to Connecticut on a cold, bleak September night, her mother commenting on the ride to rural Storrs, "I hate this place."Unfortunately for Lily Taurasi, by the time Diana boarded the plane home she had decided to ignore her mother's chilly reaction to the prospect of her leaving Southern California for the wintry Northeast.

Diana was sold on Storrs, in the middle of nowhere, as the center of the college basketball universe. In choosing Connecticut, Taurasi made the intuitive call, like a decision to take the ball to the rim or make the no-look bounce pass in traffic. Great players have tended to create without much deliberation, or fear.

Over the years, we have seen other women's college stars ace geometry, consistently make the visionary pass. Others have launched feathery jump shots from beyond the arc. But no one has had the package of athleticism, skill and size that Taurasi took to Storrs, along with the swagger that moved so many to conclude that she plays like a guy.

"I grew up seeing Magic and Michael and I wanted to play like them," she said. "I take it as a compliment. But these days, we don't have to use males to hold a high standard anymore. People say, `You play like Seimone Augustus, like Alana Beard.'

"She didn't foist herself into this discussion, not while she still had Auriemma to do it for her. Before his team had the opportunity to make Connecticut the first university to win men's and women's national titles in the same season, Auriemma stood in the locker room corridor of the New Orleans arena, demanding to know whereabouts of a certain gentleman from Durham who didn't vote for Taurasi as a first-team all-American.

Except he didn't refer to this particular reporter, who covers Duke and Alana Beard, as a gentleman, and he didn't wait for his rhetorical question to be answered.

"There's a reason his team's not here, and it's because we have the player of the year," Auriemma said.

Forgive him his testiness to all perceived slights in the final hours of his time with Taurasi. The normally playful Auriemma wouldn't volunteer his always entertaining take on Tennessee, or expound on his relationship — or lack of same — with Summitt...

"This season was, in large part, about the pursuit of the appropriate ending for the player who produced the most perfect basketball moments.

Auriemma managed to send Rebecca Lobo away as a champion. Two years ago, Sue Bird and Swin Cash went out in grand, unbeaten style. But Taurasi has been the player most like him, the brash and stubborn child of Italian immigrants. She is the player who was trying last night to lift his program to its highest level, a Tennessee-tying third straight title. Who best articulated what a Connecticut player, female or male, must first and foremost buy into when signing away up to four years in Storrs.

"My favorite question is, `What's there to do up there?' " Auriemma told The Day of New London, Conn., earlier this season. "There's 20,000 kids on campus between the ages of 18 and 22 and there's nothing to do?"

The kicker was his recollection of how Taurasi not long ago responded to the recreation by saying, "We win championships.

"Who wouldn't mourn the loss of a player who authored greatness, and her college's best recruiting pitch to replace her?
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ON THE SAME CAMPUS, BUT IN DIFFERENT WORLDS

New York Times
By Joe Drape
April 7, 2004

Jim Calhoun held up his end, returning to campus yesterday with his Connecticut Huskies as men's college basketball national champions. Last night Geno Auriemma, his colleague and sometime rival, completed a sweep when his UConn team defeated Tennessee, 70-61, for the women's title.

Connecticut became the first Division I university to hold both trophies at the same time.

The fact that the two teams made it to the Final Four was reason enough for a giddy celebration in a basketball-crazy state of 3.4 million people.

But it is more complicated than that for two hypercompetitive coaches who have not been comfortable sharing the spotlight since being hired nine months apart in 1985 and 1986.

When the women won their first national title, in 1995, Calhoun took exception to a popular bumper sticker that read: "UConn: where men are men, and women are champions." Nor was Auriemma amused when, a few years ago, Calhoun observed that UConn might be wise to have a day-care center and a senior citizens home for fans of its women's team.

For more than a decade now UConn-ologists, of which there are plenty, have been parsing Calhoun and Auriemma's public statements looking for clues to how they really feel about each other.

"Jim and Geno's relationship has a lot to do with the egos of coaching, and when you are a coach, you are actually putting what you think works against what someone else thinks works, whether it be X and O's, recruiting or promotion," said Phil Martelli, the St. Joseph's men's basketball coach, who has been a close friend of Auriemma's for 30 years.

"From the handful of times I've been with them both, they do not have what I relate to as a friendship, but it isn't like they're the Hatfield and McCoys, and I don't think of them as two guys in the Wild West who want to go out and have a duel.

"Lew Perkins, who was athletic director at UConn for 13 years before taking the same job at Kansas last year, said the pair's rivalry is responsible for the athletic success generated for a university on a rural campus in northeastern Connecticut.

Fifteen years ago, the UConn men's and women's teams had combined to win four games in the history of the N.C.A.A. tournaments and had not won a Big East championship. They have now won 85 N.C.A.A. tournament games, and they have the most championships in conference history for men or women. Calhoun team's have won two national titles, Auriemma's teams five.

"Women's basketball was new, and people did not know how to handle it until Geno created an interest in it," Perkins said. "Jim had to build a program from scratch. They both had to make themselves larger than life to get attention. There's nothing between them personally — everything they do is for their sport. If it was all hunky-dory, nobody would be writing about Connecticut. Under Jim and Geno's tough, arrogant facade, they really do have hearts of gold.

"In the mid-1990's, the men's and women's teams shared a charter jet to Kansas City, Mo., for a doubleheader with Kansas. The trip did not go well — from the fog that diverted the aircraft to Indianapolis to the light-hearted atmosphere that Calhoun believed the women brought on the trip and, finally, to the outcome of the games. Auriemma's undefeated and top-ranked team won; Calhoun's men were badly beaten.

In the postgame news conference, Calhoun tried to make light of the situation, saying that rumors that men's basketball was going to be dropped were not true. But he publicly complained about the trip, and the incident got under his skin.

When Calhoun once received a letter suggesting that Rebecca Lobo play center for his team, it made him wince with the thought that the achievements of his program had been eclipsed. He does not have to feel that way anymore.

Yesterday morning, still sweaty and aglow from his team's 82-73 victory over Georgia Tech and a second championship to match the one the UConn men won in 1999, Calhoun was asked what it would mean for the state and the university to win both titles. He hinted that his attitude toward Auriemma had softened.
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UCONN FANS CAN'T GET ENOUGH BASKETBALL SUCCESS

New York Times
By Avi Salzman
April 7, 2004

STORRS, Conn., April 6 — Forgive Tom Hoyt, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Connecticut, for missing his United States history class on Tuesday afternoon. He is not sure exactly where he was... 

The last few days were a blur as he watched Connecticut become the first university to have its men's and women's basketball teams win national championships in the same year.

"It seems like I've been going five days straight," said Hoyt, who was among the fans who filled Gampel Pavilion on Tuesday to welcome the men's team home from San Antonio, where the Huskies beat Georgia Tech to win the men's title Monday night.

Many fans stayed in Gampel until late Tuesday night to watch the women's team beat Tennessee, 70-61, in the championship game in New Orleans. They rushed the court as the game ended, then raised their hands and swayed when Coach Geno Auriemma of the women's team was being interviewed on the big screens assembled in the arena.

Hoyt was sitting in the same seat on Tuesday afternoon at Gampel Pavilion that he sat in Monday night. On Tuesday, the men's team returned to Storrs with the program's second men's national championship trophy.

The pep rally didn't begin until shortly after 6 p.m., but fans started filling the seats when the doors opened at 3:30.On Monday, 7,000 students had packed the arena and stormed the court when the men's game ended. After about 15 minutes, they left the arena and danced outside, where the university set up a light and laser show. The celebrations were boisterous, but not dangerous, university officials said...

"Shortly after 6 p.m. Tuesday, the pep rally began, the crowd erupting as each player walked up to a makeshift podium in the middle of the arena. The players looked exhausted, but they smiled for the fans and the television cameras...

Coach Jim Calhoun lifted the championship trophy and displayed it to fans. His players, Calhoun said, had lived up to the praise and high expectations heaped on them in the preseason, when they were ranked No. 1.

"They took the mantle of that responsibility and carried it to April 5," he said, "and today are the best team in the United States."

He could have said the same of the women's team.